Payback (6 page)

I heard the tap of approaching high heels, and Spence’s sister, Janie, came up beside me to snake an arm around my waist. She rested her head on my shoulder as we both stared into the closet. Into the past. A past now forever gone, just as pasts always are.

“You shouldn’t be thinking about this now,” Janie said softly, and I nodded.

“I know.”

Janie Chang had graciously driven me home from the hospital since the doctor wouldn’t let me take a cab as I requested. Too impersonal, he had said, not understanding that
impersonal
was exactly what I needed. So I had said good-bye to my hospital room, tossed the get-well cards into the wastebasket, and left instructions for the flowers sent by friends and family back East to be distributed any way the nurses saw fit. I never looked back as I left the place where I had slept away the last three and a half weeks of my life. I sat in the hospital-ordered wheelchair as Janie wheeled me out. I was wearing sweats, which Janie had retrieved from the house since I refused to wear the clothes I had been attacked in.

Janie took my hand and tugged me toward the kitchen. “I’ve made you a sandwich,” she said, so I followed. Not because I was hungry, but because I was too tired to argue.

Janie prattled on and on as she led me through the house. She was a decade older than Spence and looked considerably more Chinese. She had never married, was a little on the pudgy side, and taught piano and art at the junior college downtown. She had long dark hair that had only recently begun to gray at the temples and which she stubbornly refused to do anything about. The only good thing about Janie’s prattling was it required no response. Janie never seemed to expect it.

Notorious in the Chang family for being unable to cook, Janie had prepared me a tuna sandwich and opened a can of pork and beans. Apparently, she had attempted to hide the mediocrity of the food by putting it on my best china and placing one of my best damask napkins at the side of it. She had poured a serving of milk into a Looney Tunes jelly glass. Bugs and Elmer had never been in better company.

While I pretended to eat—with one hand, since the other was still encased in plaster—Janie excused herself and clattered off to the back of the house to make a call on her cell phone.

Finding myself relatively alone for the first time in days, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I sat at the table with one hand in my lap, the other suspended in my sling. Except for the faint hum of Janie’s voice rattling away in the background, the house was disconcertingly silent. I could never remember it being this quiet. No laughter, no music, no tippy-tapping of Franklin’s toenails as he ran around all over the place. No calling out from Spence telling me we were going to be late. Or what did I want for dinner? Or demanding a date night—as if he ever had to demand one at all.

The house even
smelled
unused. In fact, it smelled the way it had when Spence and I first bought it. Empty. Unlived-in. Vacant. I guess the living—meaning Franklin, Spence, and me—had all been absent for too long. Even the air in the house had grown stale from lack of use.

Looking down at the corner of the kitchen floor next to the door leading into the basement, I saw Franklin’s empty dog dish. The water in his water dish had evaporated long ago, leaving a dull film behind. I clutched my chest to fend off the sudden pang of heartache, wondering if Franklin was lost on the streets, starving, injured, alone and afraid. God, I hoped not. I couldn’t bear to think of him that way.

Turning to peer into the dining room, I realized Janie’s yellow roses, the roses Spence had jokingly tried to pass off as his gift to me, were dead and brown. Withered petals were sprinkled across the dining-room table, still lying where they had fallen. I was pretty sure the faint reek of decomposition I smelled came from the spoiled water in the vase. It was so like Janie to serve a tuna sandwich on the best china, place it on the kitchen table, then leave a rotting spray of roses to stink up the house on the dining-room table less than fifteen feet away.

In front of me, past the jelly glass with Bugs and Elmer on it, sat a pile of mail that had accumulated during my stay in the hospital. I could tell by the color and shape of the envelopes that much of it consisted of greeting cards. I wondered if it had been confusing for my friends to decide what sort of card to send. Should they purchase a sympathy card to offer their condolences on the loss of my husband while ignoring the fact that I had been pounded into a coma, or was it more socially responsible to shoot off a get-well card for my benefit and ignore the fact that Spence had been beaten to death like an animal, leaving yours truly all alone? Or should they buy both cards and cover all the bases?

Tough choice.

I picked up the pile of letters and cards and bills and dumped the lot of it in the wastebasket beside my chair. Then I bent down and fished it all out again. There were probably bills in there and other important stuff. I would sort it out later. Life goes on, after all.

Not that I particularly wanted it to.

Let’s face it, I was exhausted. Sadness and grief and pain had sapped every ounce of courage and strength from me. All I had left was anger. And that was burning brightly all the way down to the bone. I seethed with it. I was pretty sure, in fact, that anger was the very thing keeping me alive. Anger and a need to strike back.

I stared through the kitchen window, trembling with hate.

A clatter of high heels heralded Janie’s return. She stood behind my chair and rested a hand on my shoulder.

“You’re not eating.”

“I will.”

“Is it all right? Maybe you’d like something else.”

“Everything is fine. Thanks, Janie.”

She ran cool fingers,
piano
fingers, through my hair. “You need a haircut.”

“I know.”

“I have a class in forty-five minutes. Will you be okay on your own?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I’ll stop by later to—”

The thought of her returning made my weariness worse. “No, please, Janie. You’ve done enough. I need some time to myself. I’ll call you in a couple of days. All right?”

“If you’re sure.” She sounded relieved.

“I’m sure.”

She bent and gave me a peck on the cheek. I lifted my good hand and patted the side of her face, wishing she would go.

“Okay, then,” she said, “try to get some rest.”

Leaning in closer, she whispered in my ear. “I want those fuckers caught, Tyler. I want them to pay for what they did to my brother. And what they did to you. If there is any way I can help make that happen, let me know.”

I nodded, mute, pleading silently for her to leave. She finally did, gathering up her purse and the sweater she’d tossed on a chair. After a final peck on the cheek and a lingering caress of my unkempt hair, she clattered her way to the front door. On the way she walked right past the reeking, rotting flowers on the dining-room table without giving them a glance or a thought.

As soon as the front door clicked shut behind her, I picked up the plate with the tuna sandwich on it and flung it into the sink ten feet away. The china shattered and the sandwich splattered the window. I picked up the bowl of pork and beans and calmly sat there, realizing what a mess I would make if I threw that too. With a sigh of resignation, I carried it to the refrigerator and calmly placed the dish inside. Then I walked back to the bedroom and stood before the walk-in closet, eyeing Spence’s clothing and wondering how I was ever going to get along without him.

I finally closed the closet door to block out the sight of everything that had ever meant anything to me in my life—Spence, Spence’s things, Spence’s love—and stared instead at my reflection in the mirrored closet door.

The bruises on my face were gone but for a faint tinge of green around my right eye. There were benefits to being in a coma for close to a month. I hadn’t had to deal with seeing how I looked after being beaten to a bloody pulp. I didn’t have the memory of all the pain that came with the beating because I had slept through it. I recalled hazy moments of misery here and there, but they had left no lasting impressions.

The only pain I still carried with me from the beating was that of my broken fingers. They had been stomped on, the doctor had coolly informed me, and I remembered the motorcycle boot with the thin silver chains dangling off the side of it—the boot that came out of the darkness and kicked me in the chest. Had it been the same heavy boot that smashed my four fingers in one incredible act of cruelty and malevolence? Or had one of the other attackers done that? I supposed I would never know.

My hatred flared hotter at the thought—at the possibility—of never knowing the truth. I closed my eyes until the feeling passed.

Opening them again, I stared at my reflection once more as I listened to the silent house echo an empty song of mourning around me.

With my arm entombed in plaster, resting in the sling, the sweatpants and T-shirt Janie had brought for me to wear, the greenish bruise on the side of my face, the untended hair, the red eyes, I had to admit I looked like shit. But I didn’t care. There was something I had to do.

Studying my cast, I realized I would never be able to drive.

I rifled through the dresser drawer to scrounge up some money, took a credit card as well, just in case the cash wouldn’t be enough, and picked up my cell phone to call a cab.

I stood inside the front door until the cab pulled up out front. Then, with racing heart, I locked the house behind me and limped down the sidewalk toward the taxi.

I had to see Spence. And I understood the need of that. I did.

What I didn’t understand was the terror I felt stepping outside my front door. Without the walls of my house around me, I felt defenseless. Unprotected. That fear was new. But I would deal with it later.

I clutched my cast protectively to my chest and climbed into the cab.

“Holy Cross,” I said to the driver, and he flipped the meter. All business.

H
OLY
C
ROSS
Cemetery was just off the 805 freeway. I had never been to the place in my life. At the cemetery gates the cab driver asked, “Which way?” and it dawned on me I had no idea where the grave was located.

I pointed to an admin building off to the left. “Take me to the office. I’ll have to ask.”

The driver cast me a look through the rearview mirror. The look was less than stellar.

To appease the guy, I said, “Don’t worry. You can keep the meter running.”

He found a parking space, and I ducked through the door marked Office. Inside I found a middle-aged Latina with a name tag that read Isabela Herrara.

“Can I help you?”

I told her what I needed, and she checked a ledger filled with the names of dead people. I choked back a sob to think that Spence’s name was in there among the others.

“Ah, yes, he’s recent. Here it is.” She led me to a map on the wall and showed me how to find the grave by traversing a maze of paved lanes. Then she handed me a smaller Xerox of the same map after marking Spence’s grave with an
X
.

I nodded my thanks and hustled back to the cab, trying to maintain control, trying not to think too much about what I was doing. Trying not to cry. Trying not to remember the words,
Ah, yes, he’s recent.

I gave the driver the map and muttered, “
X
marks the spot.”

He simply nodded. After studying the map for a moment, we took off, hopefully in the right direction. Apparently it was. A few moments later, he pulled to the curb and, after checking the map one more time, pointed to the right into a field of tombstones. “Six graves down,” he said in a bored voice.

But already I could see the rectangular scar on the lawn about fifty feet away. The lumpy, poorly laid sod.

With my mind determinedly blank, I again clutched my cast to my chest as I angled myself out of the cab and stumbled awkwardly over the spongy lawn. The cemetery smelled of freshly cut grass. Off in the distance, I could see the Coronado Bridge, arching across the bay to Coronado. I realized it was a beautiful spot to spend eternity. Not that that made me feel any better.

By the time I reached the grave, tears were coursing down my cheeks. I chewed on my lip to stop myself from screaming in anger as I stared down at the rectangle of disturbed earth, unmarked by anything but a flimsy metal marker holding a slip of paper with Spence’s name on it. There were flowers in a glass vase propped up beside the marker, but they were as dead as the ones on my dining room table.

I whispered into the summer air, “I’ll get you a stone, Spence. I promise. First thing.”

My only answer was the hum of bees. The distant warbling of a mockingbird. The rustle of fronds in a palm tree back near the taxi.

I looked back and saw the cabbie standing by his car door smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t watching me. He was looking the other way.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can drive, Spence. A couple of weeks. But I’ll get them started on the stone right away.” Again I said, “I promise.” As if the corpse lying six feet underground could actually hear what I was saying.

The words
I love you
were on my lips, ready to be spoken, but somehow I couldn’t utter them.

I simply turned away and, blinded by tears, stumbled back to the cab.

The cabbie flipped his cigarette into the grass, closed the door behind me, and climbed into the front seat.

“Home?” he asked.

And seeing him watching me in the rearview mirror, I brushed the tears from my cheeks and tried to put on a businesslike face.

“No,” I said. “Go back to the cemetery office. There’s something I have to attend to.” The stone. I had to buy Spence a stone.

The cabbie nodded, glancing at the still-ticking meter. “All right.”

Thirty minutes later the gravestone was ordered, and the cab was once again pulling through the cemetery gates, this time back to the world of the living. I kept my eye on the bare patch of earth covering Spence’s grave until I could no longer see it.